Posted August 4, 2010 by Matt at 1:21 pm ·
Filed under Film
Hot off the presses, check out the new video for Dreamtigers “Spark” off the Broken Seasons EP.
Created by our friends over at In The Car Media. Good work blokes.
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Just wanted to say farewell to probably the greatest record store I ever found, and I barely knew thee…. and you will be missed dearly.
Twisted village was a great shop for outsider music. There was definately a friendly atmosphere and it seemed that they always had something I wanted. I only regret not giving them a ton of more money.
I picked up the Alexis Taylor (of Hot Chip) solo record there last year, so I will leave you with some of that… a great tune called Baby (not the Justin Bieber song)…
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Check out this awesome summer anthem from Streight Angular. A significant detour from their previous songs, “Alright!” is a yearning dance-punk-new-wave-rock track with a lot of heart. You can listen to the whole EP, which is due out on Friday, at their Bandcamp page.
Also, don’t miss their EP release show this Friday at the House of Blues front room. They’ll be playing with The Woodrow Wilsons and Night Fruit. The show is at 9pm and is FREE! What more could you want, honestly?
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Our good friend and yours Elijah Wyman just got done working in the studio with Scott Solter, and we’re very proud of the results…
Particularly this one…
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“Small Towns” brings Elijah’s tiny mtns project to that next level. With the help of Scott’s studio wizardry (he has helped such artists as Jon Vanderslice and the Mountain Goats in the past), we find tiny mtns probably a mile further down the road of pop songwriting and sound quality than he has ever been before. With a taste of raggae, a heart connected to the average man, and rhythm that will stick with you for weeks and weeks, Elijah has found his new voice.
We really hope you enjoy it.
And while you’re at it… Why not check out this video by “In The Car Media“, friends of Grinding Tapes who are currently at work on a Dreamtigers video (goosebumps). This was their submission into this year’s Boston 48 Hour Film Festival:
The video is still in the running for awards from the annual film festival. But besides being a very well made film, it prominently features tiny mtns’ “Small Towns” during the credits.
We just finished printing the CD jackets for the Grinding Tapes Mp3 Subscription! The design is classic GT and was intended to look quite a bit like our long-out-of-print first promo disc. We only made 50 copies of this CD, but there are still a few available on the subscription page. We’ll also be awarding copies for our favorite mix swap submissions, so check that out, too!
Here’s the track list:
1. The Woodrow Wilsons: Anthropomorphics (live at CHURCH in Boston, MA 6/24/2009)
2. tiny mtns: Pretzel Teeth (live at The Attik in Peabody, MA 8/24/2009)
3. Dreamtigers: Settlement (acoustic version live at The Attik in Peabody, MA 8/24/2009)
4. The Points North: New England Daughters (Live on WMBR 11/23/2009)
5. Manners: Knives (live at The Middle East in Boston, MA 8/23/2009)
6. Elijah Ebenezer Wyman: Fantastic Lovers (live on WMFO 11/29/2006)
7. Mr. Sister: Santa Baby (live at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA 12/18/2008)
8. The Points North: Auld Lang Syne (live at the Red Door in Portsmouth, NH 12/12/2009)
9. Elijah Ebenezer Wyman: Kitten’s First Christmas (live at the Vault in Salem, MA 12/1/2007)
10. Dreamtigers: Water and Smoke (live at The Red Door in Portsmouth, NH 12/12/2010)
11. The Points North: Whale Song (demo, January 2008)
12. Laura Smith (of The Woodrow Wilsons): Bloodstains (home recording)
13. Elijah Wyman: Rocks or Ankles (pre-Butterfly Needles home recording 2006-2007)
14. Saint Joe Hazelwood: Moth & Wool (live at Eastern Nazarene University in Quincy, MA 9/4/2006)
15. Manners: Breath of Your Heart (live at The Middle East in Boston, MA 8/23/2009)
16. Sylphid: A.05.01.09 (outtake)
17. The Woodrow Wilsons: Dormancy (Freedom or Decomposition Songs outtake)
18. Hello Shark: Still Warm After the Storm (outtake recorded at Grinding Tapes House)
19. The Points North: Recycling Song (kalimba and bass version recorded at Grinding Tapes House)
And, for your enjoyment, here are three rarities from the subscription CD:
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One thing that has me excited lately is the prospect of new music from Damien Jurado.
Damien has been one of my favorite artists for a very long time. A couple of years ago it was a real treat to get to see Elijah open for him at Gordon College.
His new record is going to be called Saint Bartlet and he is currently posting a song a week on his myspace in preporation for the new release. Another exciting element is that the record is produced by Richard Swift in his National Freedom Studio. (I covered Swift a little while ago in my Lost Classics series) Apparently Damien and Richard played everything on the record themselves, so there is a little bit of that funky old time Swift flavor in the online single “Arkansas” here:
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Posted April 28, 2010 by Jason at 6:00 pm ·
Filed under Promising Artists
My girlfriend discovered Faded Paper Figures a couple weeks back on Pandora. They’re pretty good! The vocal tone and thoughtful lyrics immediately bring to mind Ben Gibbard (in a good way). Check them out:
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Posted April 25, 2010 by Jason at 2:22 pm ·
Filed under DIY, Film
I recently had the opportunity to interview indie director, writer, and actor, Phil Magcalas about his most recent film, Skin and Bone. You might be wondering based on the title if it’s is somehow related to Elijah Wyman’s song from Butterfly Needles with the same name. Indeed, it is! Most of the music in the film is by Elijah. It’s also a pretty awesome movie. Check out the trailer here:
What is Skin and Bone all about?
Skin and Bone is a film which takes place over one day in a cardiac catheterization unit - the type of place where people with heart attacks and congenital heart defects go to have their hearts patched up and their arteries opened. It centers around the variety of people (not just doctors and nurses, but the patients themselves, techs and family members) who come together, from completely different situations, for one collective purpose - to focus their attentions on the care of people who are ill.
What inspired you to tackle such a dark subject after the much lighter subject matter of “Quarter Life Crisis”?
I guess I didn’t really venture to make something that was “dark,” per se. I spent four years working in a cardiac catheterization unit, and I just found the situations which took place absolutely fascinating - so more than anything else, I was trying to really depict situations honestly. Things like House and ER are fine, but there is so much dramatically interesting when you take a look at what happens every day in real actual normal hospitals. The people who work in health care are just ordinary people, so there’s a lot behind the scenes which gets pushed aside, but it’s still there. So, this movie is really an homage to the drama inherent in the situations which happen in real life, and I’d say the subject matter is just us trying to present you with relatively true-to-life experiences. For me, this nature of healthcare is uniting, and I think it comes across as a commonality that the characters share as well.I think that also, no matter what you set out to make, the film you end up with relies a great deal on what your audience takes from it. I think we’ve managed to leave certain aspects of the film open for interpretation - and I like the idea that what people get out of it depends on how they approach it. “The Quarter-Life Crisis,” our first film, was a comedy with a lot more dramatic elements than we had expected. I feel like “Skin and Bone” is a drama, and ended up with a lot more comedic elements than I expected. We had one screening at the Rainier Independent Film Festival in Washington, where it played after a pretty bleak disturbing film - and following that, “Skin and Bone” might as well have been a Marx Brothers movie - the audience picked up on every comedic thing I put in it. So it’s really subjective, and I like that.
What was the most challenging part of filming the movie?
Making this movie presented a number of challenges. I’m notoriously bad at naming characters - if you know me, and a character shares a name with you, then that character probably was named directly after you. Skin and Bone was difficult in this respect, because there are so very many characters. If you look at our credit page or our imdb site, you’ll see that we have about 35 or so cast members listed. The vast majority of these characters have at least some lines. So, getting that many people together for so many scenes which had dozens of cast members, especially when you can’t pay anyone, is incredibly difficult. We only had about 14 shooting days total, but they were spread over the course of the better part of a year, just because scheduling was such a problem.
Luckily for us, we had an incredible cast, many of whom helped behind the camera as well, and all the creative people who collaborates on this project were just unbelievably gracious with their time and talent. People stuck with us, and trusted that we were trying to make something worthwhile. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from people who have been able to identify with the ideas that this movie addresses, and that is due in a huge part to people like our cast, crew, and the awesome musicians, who supplied music that every reviewer has made note of, and who helped us achieve the appropriate atmosphere for “Skin and Bone.”
What are your next steps for getting the word out?
Well, on some good advice, we’re starting up an email list (drop us a line at macproductionsinc (at) gmail (dot) com if you’re interested!) and we’re hoping to get it out to one or two more festivals. The big thing we’re going for is good ole fashioned word of mouth, so if you get the chance to check our work out, please do! We have a trailer on our site at http://www.milkandcookieproductions.com/skinandbone.html and there are dvd’s available there. A good portion of every dvd sale goes to Partners In Health’s work in Haiti.
Side note: Check them out at http://www.standwithhaiti.org and if you really want to read one of the best books on humanity and medicine ever, check out “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder.
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Posted April 23, 2010 by David Ells at 1:30 pm ·
Filed under General
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Featuring Frank and Sue Albani from the Soule Homestead
Middleboro Midday is an AM radio show in Middleboro, MA that covers events and people from the local area. Hosted by Ed Rand, the show has a charming local feel to it while also showcasing Ed’s sense of humor and interest in pop culture. Grinding Tapes was featured last week in a very entertaining episode.
